Fires put heat on regional communications system

Two San Diego County supervisors stopped just short this month
of calling the county's ballyhooed, $90 million regional
communications system worthless, saying it has repeatedly failed
during catastrophes in recent years.

Approved by supervisors in 1992 and put into action in 1998, the
Regional Communications System was supposed to save lives and
property by making it easier for emergency responders from 80
local, county and state government agencies, such as firefighters
and sheriff's deputies, to talk to each other during catastrophes
on one unified system.

Instead, the system has been plagued by busy signals when
disaster strikes, say Supervisors Bill Horn and Dianne Jacob. The
county built most of the system's towers along the coast, reasoning
that was where the population was largest. But a string of
emergencies in the eastern part of the county has exposed
weaknesses in the system, which works well under normal
conditions.

"When we have an emergency, it fails us: At the shootings in
Santana, at the Viejas fire, it failed. At the Pines fire it failed
… in the Paradise fire it failed," Horn said at a supervisors
meeting Dec. 9. "I don't say it's a bad system … but every time we
have an emergency and the phone will not ring, I think there's a
real problem."

At the same time, all five supervisors and several top county
administrators said the system worked most of the time during the
recent fires. In addition, they said it was a major improvement
over the fractured communications system it replaced, where
different agencies had different equipment that often could not
"talk" to each other.

Busy signals during fires

But Jacob said emergency responders during the weeklong
firestorms encountered 38,000 busy signals in South County and a
whopping 68,000 busy signals in the East County "loop," which
encompasses the North County communities of Valley Center, Ramona
and Julian.

Many of those busy signals amounted to just temporary
interruptions in communications. But officials said even a
temporary loss of communication in a disaster where lives and
property are in danger can be critical.

"It is very dangerous. We need to upgrade it," said a third
supervisor, Pam Slater.

Slater and board Chairman Greg Cox said last week that the
communications system has problems, but the two were less strident
than Horn and Jacob, whose districts were hit the hardest by the
recent fires that killed 16 people and destroyed 2,400 homes.

At their December meeting, the full Board of Supervisors ordered
county Chief Administrative Officer Walt Ekard to come back within
45 days with recommendations on how to deal with the system's gaps
in coverage and busy signals.

Curt Munro of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department manages
the Regional Communications System. The problems the system has are
capacity issues, and not that the technology is antiquated or
obsolete, he said.

Growth outwits officials

Munro said the busy signals in the East County loop and in South
County are the result of a couple of factors.

First, when the system was created, officials thought that the
number of users on the system would eventually grow to 12,000
radios as the county encouraged other local cities and fire
agencies to switch to matching equipment.

But Munro and supervisors said there are now more than 17,000
users hooked onto the system. A county report on the system said
that number could swell to 35,000 "within a few years."

Another factor was that the county chose to build most of the
system's towers and radio stations where the bulk of the population
was -- along the coast and urbanized inland areas, rather than in
the backcountry, Munro said.

The eastern portion of the system has more than enough capacity
for emergency personnel to use during "normal business," he said.
But when scads of emergency responders have flooded into the area
during a disaster, the system has become overloaded, such as during
the October fires, the 2001 Viejas fire in Alpine, the 2002 Gavilan
fire in Fallbrook, and the 2002 Pines fire in Julian.

Built for the coast

Munro said the decision to install less infrastructure in East
County was made because there were fewer people living in those
areas. However, the region is exactly where many of the recent
disasters, in the form of wildfires, have occurred.

"There very obviously is a problem -- not in normal day-to-day
use, but in a major incident," he said.

Munro said the system's capacity could be expanded by investing
more money. The county's report states that expansion would cost
roughly $18 million.

At Jacob's suggestion, the county unsuccessfully applied for a
$6.8 million federal grant to help expand the eastern portion.

Munro said the communication system's managers hoped to ask
supervisors for money to expand the system last year, but failed to
do so because of state and county budget woes.

Horn said he didn't know that the system's eastern portion
needed expanding, and the information that it did angered him. He
said that he was under the impression that the system was supposed
to provide regional coverage for the county.

"It's news to me," Horn said. "I thought this was supposed to
work for the Sheriff's Department and fire departments
(regionwide)."

Money's been spent

Munro said that about $50 million of the $90 million the county
has spent on the system has gone into building the towers and other
infrastructure, while the remaining millions have been spent for a
new sheriff's dispatch center and to buy radio equipment used by
emergency responders.

Getting money to expand the system is probably not going to get
any easier for the foreseeable future.

San Diego County leaders say local governments statewide are
facing a potential $4 billion midyear cut in state funding in
January because of California's continuing deficit crisis.

Horn said the company that sold the county the system should
help.

"My reaction is that I think Motorola has a responsibility to
come in here with their engineers and tell us what the weak points
are," Horn said. "I don't want to spend anymore money until we know
that. If they sold us the system, did they know that it would get
overloaded?"

Motorola is a large electronics company that sells two-way radio
equipment and systems to consumers and government customers.

Supervisors agreed that the communications system has problems.
But they also said that it is much better than the system it
replaced. Before the unified system was created, the plethora of
cities, fire agencies, ambulance services and other responders that
serve residents countywide had their own individual communications
systems. Those systems were not always compatible. The result was
often a Tower of Babel situation in emergencies where the agencies
fighting the disaster could not easily contact one another.

At the same time, supervisors said that they've spent the last
eight years persuading other local governments to switch over to
the county's system, and cannot now shift course.

"We spent all this money on it," Horn said. "So I just think we
have to really look at this overall and decide whether it should be
repaired, fixed or what."